NEW DELHI: UTI AMC, India's oldest asset management company with assets of around Rs 61,000 crore, could finally have a permanent boss after being headless for the last 18 months.

The AMC's board has recommended to its shareholders names of three candidates for the position of chairman and managing director, two persons familiar with the development told ET. The shortlisted candidates are AIG India chief executive and country head Sunil Mehta, senior advisor at McKinsey & Co in India Leo Puri, and Punita Kumar Sinha, former senior managing director of Blackstone Group's India-focused mutual fund.

The board has also recommended the name of an internal UTI AMC executive as a fallback option if the shareholders do not agree on the three external candidates.

UTI Mutual Fund director Sachit Jain, who is part of the three-member search committee constituted by the board, said the board had sent the names of shortlisted candidates to the shareholders but declined to disclose their names. The UTI board chairman, PR Khanna, refused to comment and the three candidates, Puri, Mehta and Sinha, too, declined to comment.

Puri, the former head of McKinsey India, rejoined the consulting firm in December 2011 as senior advisor after serving a four-and-a-half-year stint as managing director of private equity major Warburg Pincus. He serves on the boards of Max India and Max Healthcare.

Mehta has been the country head and chief executive of AIG India and is responsible for all of its Indian businesses, including life and general insurance, financial services and investments. Prior to joining AIG, he was with Citibank for over 18 years.

Sinha, the daughter-in-law of former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, was in-charge of Oppenheimer's India-focused fund which was subsequently taken over by Blackstone. The fund with asset under management of about $1.22 billion was sold to Aberdeen Asset Management in December 2011.

UTI AMC, which runs India's fifth largest mutual fund, has not had a full-fledged chairman since UK Sinha left UTI to become the head of market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India in February 2011.

Sinha's departure was followed by an unseemly row between the finance ministry and T Rowe Price over the choice of his successor. While the finance ministry pushed for the appointment of Jitesh Khosla, a 1979 batch IAS officer and brother of Omita Paul, the powerful advisor of former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, as the UTI AMC chairman, T Rowe Price insisted that a professional should be appointed.

Several permutations and combinations, including splitting the CMD's post into two, were discussed, but the deadlock could not be broken. A few board members also quit as UTI AMC slipped from fourth to fifth position in the mutual fund league table. Finally, earlier this year, Imtaiyazur Rahman was appointed interim CEO.

Once shareholders select and approve the name of the CMD, it will be ratified by the trustees of UTI.